THE vibrant colours of India and a stepfather who lived as a virtual hermit in the Himalayas, a love of magnificent buildings and a mother spellbound by art are all elements which go into the making of Alan Taylor's pictures.

A restless character whose intellectual credentials are lightened by a ready good humour, Alan Taylor is painter, writer and computer graphics expert, all at a time when less motivated men are reaching for their pipe and slippers.

An exhibition of Mr Taylor's work at the GPF gallery in Newport comprises Welsh scenes with a fair number of castles, but their spartan shapes are drenched with the sort of colour the artist remembers from his Indian childhood.

A former head of design for the BBC, Alan Taylor was born in Southern India but moved to the north of the country with his Indian mother and Russian stepfather before coming to Britain in 1950.

Two years ago his book One Day As A Tiger made the author a modest profit but since then he has been spending most of his time designing book jackets for Internet authors. That's the day job. The computer-generated pictures which are his latest passion have to be fitted in between book jacket deadlines.

"I am fascinated by buildings and often portray castles quite accurately. But I look at them and say 'I think it needs more colour' and so I have no scruples about adding it in'," he says.

"There are even visible brush marks. People say 'Oh, the computer did all that' but of course it didn't. The computer can only do what I make it do." And of course, Alan Taylor is adept with brush and pencil and could if he wished, recreate his own work in traditional form. In fact, the idea amuses him.

"My natural father was a forestry officer in India but he died before I knew him. My mother remarried and my Russian stepfather was a really interesting guy who went to work with Nicholas Roerich, the painter who was kicked out of Russia at the time of the revolution and lived in a remote part of the Himalayas. My father was with him for 15 or so years as a sort of personal assistant.

"By the time the war had started he had met my mother and was working for a magazine which disseminated anti-Soviet propaganda for the British government in India. When Russia came into the war the paper changed its viewpoint overnight, of course.

"I suppose it was hypocrisy of a sort but I was only 12 and glad to be given the chance to design the cover. My ability to do this came largely though the encouragement of my mother who put a paint-brush in my hands when I was only three."

The young Alan had been moved by the grandeur of Moghul architecture and had begun to study architecture before coming to Britain. Once here, he dropped architecture in favour of an art education at Kingston Art College and at the Royal College of Art.

"Computers allow me to do all sorts of things but it is really an add-on to the painting and drawing which, for years, I did with traditional materials," he says.

"You can put in brush strokes and all sorts of other effects but it isn't so very different from working with a palette knife and brush. Everything has to belong, and come together as a picture.

"I did plan to paint all the castles in Wales until I realised there were some 300 of them. But they all have their own personality which I have tried to capture. I draw the landscape and the building accurately, but if I think it needs colour then I am happy to put in the saffron or whatever.

"If you are born in India and have your childhood there, The sense of colour is always with you.

"Some of the earlier paintings are re-worked from pictures in traditional materials which I have scanned in and played with, but others are generated purely on the computer. I have taken my laptop out in the car and sat there using it as a sketch pad.

"All of the pictures are for sale, and each is unique." At present, the book covers are keeping Alan Taylor busy but he is also tinkering with a sequel to One Day As A Tiger .

His pictures are immensely colourful, but with things in your life such as a stepfather who lived with a Russian hermit in the Himalayas, the vivid bustle of India and an artistic mother, colour of one sort of another is precisely what you would expect.

l Wales by Computer, a collection of computer-generated art by Alan Taylor is at the GPF Gallery, George Street, Newport, until August 28. Ring 01633 264581 for further details.